1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus, method, and medium for distinguishing a vocal sound, and more particularly, to an apparatus, method, and medium for distinguishing a vocal sound from various sounds.
2. Description of the Related Art
Identification of vocal sounds from other sounds is an actively studied subject. The identification may be resolved in a sound recognition field. The sound recognition may be performed to automatically understand the origin of environmental sounds. For example, the sound identification may be performed to automatically understand the origin of all types of environmental sounds including human sounds and the environmental or natural sounds. That is, the sound recognition may be performed to identify the sources of the sounds, for example, a person's voice or an impact sound generated from a piece of glass broken on a floor. Semantic meaning similar to human understanding can be established on the basis of the identification of the sound sources. Therefore, the identification of the sound sources is the first object of sound recognition technology.
Sound recognition deals with a much broader sound field than speech recognition because nobody can determine how many kinds of sounds exist in the world. Therefore, sound recognition focuses on limited sound sources closely related to potential applications or functions of sound recognition systems to be developed.
There are various kinds of sounds to be recognized. As examples of sounds that can be generated at home, there may be a simple sound generated by a hard stick tapping a piece of glass, or a complex sound generated by an explosion. Other examples of sounds include a sound generated by a coin bouncing on a floor; verbal sounds such as speaking; non-verbal sounds such as laughing, crying, and screaming; sounds generated by human actions or movements; and sounds ordinarily generated from a kitchen, a bathroom, bedrooms, or home appliances.
Because the number of types of sounds is infinite, there is a need for an apparatus, method, and medium for effectively distinguishing a vocal sound generated by a person from various kinds of sounds.